1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid discharge apparatus, a control method of the liquid discharge apparatus, a device driver for the liquid discharge apparatus, and a printing system.
2. Related Art
Examples of an ink jet type recording apparatus (a printer) which is a type of a liquid discharge apparatus include a so-called serial type printer which feeds out the recording medium (an impacted object) such as recording paper in the direction orthogonal to a main scanning direction so as to sequentially execute sub scanning on the recording medium while reciprocating an ink jet type recording head which has a shorter width than that of the recording medium in the main scanning direction, and discharges ink from a nozzle of a recording head to record an image or the like on the recording medium. In the printer with such a configuration, when a solvent component of the ink from the nozzle is evaporated and thus the ink is thickened during a recording process (or referred to as a printing process), a flushing operation for discharging the thickened ink from the nozzle is executed (refer to JP-A-2013-121691). Since the flushing operation is a well-known art, the detailed description will be omitted, but in short, the recording process is stopped due to some reasons that a predetermined time has elapsed during the recording process, or a certain condition is established by monitoring a thickened state in the nozzle, and then ink from the nozzle is discharged in an area (a flushing point) in which the flushing is executed, that is, clearly flushed.
In addition, as a printer, a so-called line type printer which is provided with a recording head (a line type liquid discharge head) which includes a plurality of head unit groups, and in which the entire length of a nozzle group which is formed of the plurality of head unit groups in the width direction of the recording medium corresponds to the maximum recording width of the recording medium which is available in the printer, and executes recording with respect to the recording medium only by transporting the recording medium without scanning the recording head in the width direction of the recording medium, has been also proposed (refer to JP-A-2013-107207). In the above-described line type printer, since it is difficult to execute the flushing operation by moving the recording head to the flushing point in the middle of the recording process unlike the serial type printer, an area for flushing which is set in an outer margin portion of the area for recording an image or the like on the recording medium is flushed or the area for printing the image or the like on the recording medium is flushed so as not to be noticeable.
However, in the serial printer, since the flushing operation is executed during the recording process, there is a problem in that the image quality of a recorded image is degraded.